Some people are fans of the Washington Commanders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Commanders. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Washington Commanderskins.
If American political strategists have taught me anything over the years, it’s that you should always meet the racists halfway. For the good of all.
Your 2023 record: 4-13. This was the first time this century that this team played a full season under an owner other than Dan Snyder, which was cause for mass celebration in the DMV ... for two games. What happened next was shit you would 100 percent expect from an organization called “The Commanders.” They gave a self-immolating, 0-4 Bears team its first win, allowing Justin Field to pass—PASS!—for four touchdowns, with D.J. Moore going for eight catches and 230 yards against them in a 20-point loss at home. They went winless against the NFC East, including a sweep at the hands of Dallas by a combined score of 83-20. They lost to the Seahawks at the gun. They rallied from a 27-7 halftime against the Jets, and then lost anyway on another FG at the gun. Here is how Trevor Siemian, then-starting QB for the Jets, reacted to the win: “Oh, man, it was freakin' fun, man. It was fun, it wasn't fun and then it was fun again.”
When Trevor Siemian has fun against your team, that’s not good. This was the worst defense in football, giving up over 30 points a game. That licentiousness included surrendering 31 points in a single half against the Dolphins and another 31 points to future deli sandwich Tommy DeVito and a truly pathetic Giants outfit. Washington’s defensive backs didn’t bother covering anyone all season, and their vaunted (word used generously) defensive front was yard-saled prior to the trade deadline, with Montez Sweat going to Chicago and Chase Young to San Francisco. You could have posted 300 against this D. In fact, I think you did. You fucking rock!
Over on offense, the Commanders poached Eric Bieniemy from the Chiefs to be their offensive coordinator. Bieniemy exclusively drew up plays to get his QB sacked 900 times, and now works in the Big Ten. A year from now, he’ll be coaching middle school. This offense’s best performances came in two games against the Eagles, both of which the Commanders lost. In the first loss, Washington tied the game on a TD pass at the gun in regulation, only to lose in OT on a 54-yard field goal. In the second loss, they blew a 14-3 lead and allowed Jalen Hurts to pass for exactly 319 yards a second time. Hurts threw six touchdown passes in those two games. He wasn’t picked off once.
So you’d be forgiven if you watched this team go through all of its usual bullshit for four straight months and assumed that Snyder was still in charge of everything. They had a shitty retread coach, a shittier Baker Mayfield at QB, a shitty defense, and a shitty attitude about life in general. Which brings me to ...
Your coach: Ben Johnso—OH WAIT!
The rub is that Johnson, who pulled himself out of 2022 opportunities despite his burgeoning hot coach status, and his agent shared their exit plans by texting team officials while the Commanders’ group was on a flight from the Washington, D.C., area to meet in Michigan…
“Outrageous. Simply outrageous,” said a league source familiar with the situation. “That’s not how you conduct business. It is how you ruin your reputation.”
That source, whose call could’ve been traced to Ashburn by fucking Harriet the Spy, was referring to Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Johnson abruptly turned down the Commanders’ head coaching job after then–Ravens DC Mike Macdonald did likewise. And boy, doesn’t anonymously smearing that man in the press scream NEW DAWN to all you Comms fans out there? Dan Snyder certainly never played the “Actually I am the wronged party here” card, no siree. But the Commanders and their search group—headed by failed former Vikings GM Rick Spielman and former Warriors executive Bob Myers—salvaged the process by snatching this man away from the hated Cowboys:
Yep, it’s Dan Quinn. And don’t act like this man is a retread the way Ron Rivera was. Dan Quinn wears his hat backward now! He's been Dan Campbell-fied by 20 percent! Why, his youthful vigor will make your penis cower in fright, it will!
When we last saw Dan Quinn in the playoffs as a head coach, his defense blew the largest lead in Super Bowl history. When we last saw him a defensive coordinator in the playoffs, his team gave up 48 points to the Packers. At home. In a game the Cowboys were favored to win by a touchdown. With a unit that had actual defenders on it. If I see these Commanders in the opponent column for any DFS player, I’m drafting them without even checking to see if they’re hurt.
Your new offensive coordinator is Kliff Kingsbury, who nearly got Caleb Williams killed at USC a season ago. That experience will come in handy for Kingsbury as he grooms this fine fellow ...
Your quarterback: Heisman winner Jayden Daniels, shown here!
Oops my bad. Wrong tragedy. Daniels does a lot of exciting shit with his feet but also had a career pressure-to-sack ratio of 24 percent in college, which placed him among the worst across all FBS quarterbacks. If this man gets pressured, he’s getting crushed nearly a quarter of the time. That’s not a good omen when your offensive line consists of nothing but romaine lettuce.
And Daniels doesn’t even need to be behind the line of scrimmage to get his shit ruined. If defenders refuse to sack him, he’ll go right ahead and seek out brain-annihilating contact farther downfield. And who better to coach these bad habits out of Daniels than the sentient Tesla who ruined Kyler Murray when he was head coach in Arizona? The Commanders will start Daniels too early and end up facing a wrongful death conviction for it. After that, go ahead and pencil in new backup Marcus Mariota for, oh, let’s say a dozen starts. If you guys are lucky, Mariota will turn out to be the second coming of Geno Smith. You will not be that lucky.
What’s new that sucks: Mariota is but one of many brand-name players the Commanders brought in to make a 6-11 record look respectable. They signed former Chargers RB Austin Ekeler, who can no longer play, LB Bobby Wagner (ditto), and draft busts Clelin Ferrell and Dante Fowler. The best free agent they signed was Frankie Luvu, who was a hidden gem in Carolina and will be an overpriced slob now that he’s arrived in Landover. I’ve lived in this area for over 20 years. I know what happens to free agents here. To play for this franchise is forget what it’s like to feel anything.
As for the rookie class, Washington loaded up with Daniels, DT Johnny Newton, TE Ben Sinnott, and CB Mike Sainristil. I loved Sainristil when he was at Michigan, so much so that I hoped my own team would draft him. Instead, he went to the Commanders, who will fuck him good. This team drafted CB Emmanuel Forbes in the first round a year ago, at Rivera’s behest, only to bench him late in the season when he couldn’t cover anyone. Nothing flourishes here. The entire stadium may as well have been built out of fucking sand.
Bob Myers, by the way, is the dude who gave Jordan Poole $124 million, and then wandered onto the NBA Countdown set looking like he’d just come from giving a speech at an insurance convention. He ain’t shit.
Zach Ertz is also here now. To do what, I have no idea.
What has always sucked: Like Snyder, Josh Harris is only interested in the on-field accomplishments of this team insofar as they can help him get a fat new stadium, preferably one close to where most Commanders fans live (Bowie, Manassas, and Birmingham, Ala. circa 1963). And he’ll get it. He’ll get it by reminding everyone that he’s not Dan Snyder. He’ll get it by pandering to fans who root much harder for racism than for the football team. He’ll get it by trotting out new Team President Adam Peters, along with his Executive Superfriends, to assure those fans that the team will Bring Back Our Tradition While Also Being Highly Respectful Of All People And Cultures. And he’ll get it because no owner since Steve Ballmer has had a lower bar to clear. Everything is set up for this man to succeed ... at making money. The rest? No one in this organization gives half a shit.
And you know what? I’m fine with all of that. I was alive for Doug Williams. I was alive for Mark Rypien. I was alive for the bouncing stands at RFK stadium. I remember when D.C. wasn’t just a football town, but THE football town. Despite being a fan of another team, I naively hoped that Snyder’s exit would bring this fanbase back from the dead. But these fans never deserved that. They were always entitled, loud, and delusional. So the completely anodyne team that they have now is precisely what they deserve. There’s no more history here. No pride. No heritage. No Super Bowls. The Commanders look and operate like a shitty expansion team, because that’s what they really are. The Washington Washingtonians. Pathetic. I hope their new stadium has only one bathroom.
The O-line still consists of five houseplants.
What might not suck: Oh dude, those first few Daniels starts are gonna be appointment television. The man is faster than a motel room tryst. It’ll be so freakin’ fun, and then not fun.
Jason Wright is leaving. I have him down for taking a job with Meta the second his severance pay lapses.
HEAR IT FROM COMMANDERS FANS!
Ted:
We landed yet another hard-nosed, tough, defensive, old school footbaw coach that nobody wanted to hire and our defense will be 23rd in the league again. Our first round QB will literally die by Week 7 if we're lucky. Our stadium is still a giant concrete toilet in PG county. We have not one, but TWO front office assholes named Marty who Dan Snyder hired still in the building. Fuck this fucking team. I hope they rename them something even stupider.
Leo:
Just throw me in an open grave in my John Riggins jersey already.
Stewart:
It will always be Snyder’s team at heart.
Robert:
Months after signing kicker Brandon McManus, he's accused of sexually assaulting two attendants on the Jags' flight to London for their annual residency.
Woody:
The best QB we've drafted in my lifetime is Kirk Cousins.
James:
There are 28-3 reasons to hate the Dan Quinn hiring, but this is mine: "His guys love him and play hard for him" doesn't mean shit. They said the exact same thing about Jay Gruden and Norv Turner.
Like all proper Why Your Team Sucks emails, I'm writing this months ahead of time while drunk.
Todd:
Fans in the area legitimately argued about how Taylor Heinecke was a good QB because he "just won."
Nick:
It's not just Quinn. The team is assembling experienced losers everywhere it can: long-time Panthers failure Marty Hurney, former Lions GM Martin Mayhew, and a second Panthers washout in Scott Fitterer. The hope at this point is that Adam Peter is going to ask all these guys for input and do whatever they don't say.
Jonathan:
I challenge you to find a worse game-day experience than FedEx.
Michael:
At various points during the 2014 season I thought all of these things were true:
-Jay Gruden was our savior
-We legitimately had a chance at 9-7 and a playoff berth
-DeSean Jackson was our savior
-Kirk Cousins was our savior
-Colt McCoy was our savior
-RGIII was our savior
-Ryan Kerrigan was our savior
Dave:
Because the new owners didn't get around to firing Jason Wright until last week and haven't kicked the rape cover-up enabling, lying sack of shit out of the building yet.
Scott:
On May 23, 2024, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay referred to the Washington Football Team as “…a tormented pile of laundry that lives in a cardboard box off the Beltway and habitually misses the playoffs.” while he marveled that some group of plutocrats paid $6 billion for that particular “privilege”. Nothing in his description is inaccurate or even unfair.
Will:
The fucking stink of Snyder is in the walls and will not be exorcised by bringing in Some West Coast dipshit GM who treats every decision like a VC manager and a coach whose defenses only perform well in the regular season.
Also, they have no line to protect Daniels, who will end up doing the RG3 speedrun and tear every ligament in his legs by the end of this season.
Ben:
They spent an entire decade investing the remnants of their post-RG3 draft capital into a defense run by a CTE patient who didn't storm the Capitol simply because he had a playoff game against Tom Brady later that week.
Of the three living offensive players they drafted in the first rounds between 2013 and 2023, one (Jahan Dotson) remains on the roster.
They are the perfect avatar of our foreign policy. They have a long, proud tradition of success generations ago, followed by squandering whatever goodwill with wasteful quagmire after wasteful quagmire, leading to bloated imperial rot and all-consuming hysteria and paranoia. They are now an exhausted, wheezing, unserious organization lacking any influence in the community it purports to lead, headed (until Sunday) by someone a decade-plus past his shelf life.
This is the least essential team in the league, and I'm going to watch at least 25% of their bullshit anyway because, like any disaffected left voter, it would be nice to see them doing something positive for a change.
Anthony:
Growing up in DC, the S*ins were the biggest thing in town, bar none. They were the area's one unifying force: you could have the same conversations on Capitol Hill or in Anacostia. Everybody followed them and everybody cared. Everybody knew Joe Gibbs was the best coach in NFL history, that we had the best theme song and the best fans, and that our stadium rocked louder than any other.
When Dan Snyder destroyed the franchise, he completely eliminated this unifying thread so completely that sometimes I barely even remember it existed. We rarely watch the "Commanders," and I can't recall the last time some stranger brought them up unprompted in conversation.
Recently, my seven-year-old son decided he liked the Eagles for some reason. He wore a Jalen Hurts jersey and a cute little Eagles mask to school after the Eagles won the team's second head to head matchup. I didn't think anything of it until after I dropped him off, and then anxiety started creeping in. I remembered how kids wearing Eagles or Cowboys gear got treated in MY school days. Maybe other families still cared? Would he get bullied, or stuffed in a trash can?
When I picked him up, I asked how his day went. "Great!"
“Did anybody say anything about your shirt?"
"Nope!'
Phew, crisis averted. We were walking towards the cars when a loud voice called out, "Hey kid!"
It was a guy about my age, making a beeline towards us. Shit. Here it comes. Some blowhard who hasn't let go of the old days is about to make a scene and make my kid cry.
He stopped short and pointed a finger at my son, whom I edged around protectively.
"Go Birds!" the guy said.
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Correction: A previous version of this post said that the Commanders had a 27-7 halftime lead against the Jets in Week 16 last season.
